Good News in History, November 14

On this day 135 years ago, “Treasure Island” by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson was first published. The pirate story was the first to talk about treasure maps marked with an “X”, the Black Spot, and one-legged seamen bearing parrots on their shoulders. Over 50 film and TV versions have been produced of Treasure Island, and 24 major adaptations for the stage. WATCH the trailer with a young Christian Bale playing opposite Charlton Heston, who plays the pirate Long John Silver… (1883)

MORE Good News on this Date:

Journalist Nellie Bly began her successful Jules Verne-inspired attempt to travel around the world in 80 days; she succeeded—and needed only 72 (1889)

Albert Einstein presented his quantum theory of light (1908)

Czechoslovakia became a republic (1918)

The BBC, British Broadcasting Company, began radio broadcasts (1922)

President Roosevelt declared the Philippines to be a free territory (1935)

Detroit Red Wings hockey player Gordie Howe set a new NHL record with his 627th career goal (1964)

The first public trains used the Channel Tunnel to transport passengers under the English Channel (1994)

And, on this day in 1840 Claude Monet, one of the founders of French Impressionist painting, was born in Paris.

Beloved for his later depictions of lily ponds outside his Giverny countryside home, he exemplified the movement’s core value of expressing one’s perceptions of nature through broken color and rapid brushstrokes. The term “Impressionism” was derived from the title of his painting Impression, Sunrise, displayed in 1874 at the first exhibition mounted by the radical new school of artists. Look at dozens of his works on Wikipedia…

And on this day in 1851, Herman Melville’s novelMoby Dick was published. With one of the most famous opening lines in literature, “Call me Ishmael,” a sailor tells the story of the obsessive quest of Captain Ahab for revenge on a white whale that bit off the whaler’s leg at the knee.

The novel was a commercial failure, and out of print at the time of the author’s death 40 years later, but during the 20th century, it earned a reputation as a Great American Novel. “The book draws on Melville’s experience at sea, on whaling literature, and on literary inspirations such as Shakespeare and the Bible to offer a realistic description of life aboard ship with a culturally diverse crew.”

And on this day in 1982, Lech Wałęsa, the leader of Poland’s outlawed Solidarity movement, was released after eleven months of persecution and internment near the Soviet border.

Photo by Giedymin Jabłoński – CC license

Two years earlier the electrician had won a sweeping victory with communist rulers for the right to organize independent unions that could strike. He continued his activism, which culminated in semi-free parliamentary elections in 1989 and a Solidarity-led government, with a reluctant Walesa becoming Poland’s first popularly elected president the following year—the first non-Communist president in nearly a half century.